A Handy Guide to Addressing Sexism within the Ranks

#48 Doth not protest too much.

I’m fond of starting my posts with a hypothetical scenario for demonstration purposes, so let’s have another one here.

Short Version
Woman: I am making a complaint about sexism and misogyny in skepticism.
Man: I am making a disproportionate response.

Long Version
I am noticing more and more often in reading the blogs (and probably in following the videos, although I don’t generally participate in the videosphere but have heard plenty about it) that whenever a woman makes a pretty straightforward point about sexism, there are predictably people–usually men, but not always–who show up to shut her down by flooding her with words. Written words, spoken words, short statements by lots of other people saying the same kind of thing… you’ve seen it. A woman makes a point that is met with a disproportionate response so often that you can almost bank on the inverse relationship between worthiness of the response and its word count. It’s like some sort of Feminist Godwin’s Law without Nazis: The longer the blog comment, the less likely the commenter has anything productive to contribute or is even directly engaging in the point.

Let’s get the exception out of the way so we don’t have to play gotcha in the comments section. Here is an example of a proportionate response:

Woman: I am writing a 1500-word blog post about sexism I have experienced.
Man: I am writing a 1500-word blog post in response to your blog post about sexism you have experienced.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about protesting too much, which takes many forms:

GaslightingGaslighting is a term that has come into my awareness rather recently, and it refers to a specific attempt at psychological manipulation based on the events in a movie titled Gas Light. It takes lots and lots of effort to make a person doubt their own perceptions, but I’ve seen it plenty of times when a woman describes an experience and receive in response long explanations for how she’s the one with the problem–not the perpetrators of sexism she’s complaining about–or how she’s become so irrational you can’t trust what she says, or how she’s just unable to comprehend the magnitude of what she’s saying, et cetera. Gaslighting requires creating entire frameworks of how to view a situation from scratch (whereas most skeptics would apply Occam’s Razor and go with the idea that the skeptical woman they are talking to is just as capable of being objective as they are), and has to contain recruitment language, too, for the audience watching at home, in order that this gaslighting point of view be understood as the correct one and that the woman’s point of view is unreliable.

If you can make a woman look unreliable, nobody has to act on her wild and unreasonable complaints. Voila! Status quo preserved.

Gish Gallop
Skeptics ought to know all about the Gish Gallop, but there are always people new to the identity, so here’s a definition from Rational Wiki: “the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time”

Within a Gish Gallop on sexism or misogyny, you’ll find points taken to ridiculous extremes (a la if guys can’t corner women in elevators to ask them for sex the human race will die out), demands that one woman explain something another woman said (perhaps even at a different blog), accusations of various types (logical fallacies being particularly popular), deliberate misunderstandings (such as claiming the original etymological meaning of a word isn’t offensive), outrageous claims (like nobody in skepticism likes you), and general ruckus in lieu of arguments. A Gish Gallop is too convoluted to give a response to, would take too long to give a response to, and yet someone invariably will try—which wastes a lot of women’s time–or else they’ll disdain it–which leaves a wall of text sitting there as if it meant something important.

If you can Gish Gallop successfully, you can show how a woman’s complaints are unsupportable because she can’t even keep up with basic arguments, and you can have the last word.

Someone Is Wrong on the Internet
Beautifully illustrated at xkcd here. A woman has said something a man disagrees with, and it is more important than tending to health itself to make sure she knows she’s wrong and that he wins the point. It’s a full commitment to shutting down an argument that precludes actually reflecting on the points being made for any length of time. It’s a public display of rightness and it devalues the actual conversation in favor of crowing victorious about whatever at the end. It requires exhausting the other person until they go to bed first, thus proving that persistence makes truth or something (and thus cementing this point of view more firmly in your mind).
If you win SIWOTI, it proves that Reason was on your side. Bad arguments wear themselves out; only rationality remains.

Mansplaining
Mansplaining–which I covered here, in my Bonus Content–does not always take a lot of words, but it can, particularly when someone steps around the actual problem to expound at length all his thoughts about this, that, and the other thing, throughout history or from his personal point of view, or what women should do different, almost entirely without listening to what the woman has already said. Her input is just a jumping off point, not a point to consider, and once he gets going the essay just starts writing itself. All of which might be perfectly interesting at some other time, but serves as a big dismissal of what anyone has had to say but him.

If you resort to mansplaining, it’s only because man’s perspective is the most important thing to hear and no one was listening properly.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.
Or, to quip again: Do not ride an elephant to catch grasshoppers. Rule of thumb: If you have to scroll through the page to finish reading the your comment, it’s probably too long. You’re probably overwhelming the argument because you think for some reason or another that what you have to say is the most important thing. You probably have, as my mother would put it, an I problem. And women skeptics understand the I problem very well. Whatever observation/argument/recommendation the woman had to make, in an effort to help improve their sense of fully belonging to the skeptical community, has been sacrificed to the I problem, and at some point they are going to disengage.

It is at this point that you can congratulate yourself for shutting down dialogue completely, and for reinforcing the barriers to participating women were trying to erode. And you maybe never intended to do that. So try this next time:

Mind your word count. Think about what point you are contesting before you start to write or record or speak. Address that point. Generally, your response should be no longer than the original comment you are contesting. If you are responding to a blog post in kind, publish your response somewhere else. If you have to scroll through an entire computer screen to read your comment, start over. Better yet, don’t start at all. If all you have to talk about is yourself, stay out of it. If all you have to say to a woman in skepticism is that she’s doing it wrong, or misunderstands what’s happening, turn that around and realize that you have just demonstrated that YOU are doing it wrong and misunderstanding what is happening. If someone throws a TL;DR your way (teal deer! Ha! just stumbled over that phrase today and laughed and laughed), get the hint. If your comment was that long, it wasn’t worth reading. And if you are accused of gaslighting, mansplaining, Gish Galloping, or fighting for no purpose other than to win, your accuser is probably right.

Nothing you have to say is four or six or ten times more important than what a woman has to say about her own experience in skepticism. Nothing. Chances are, what you have to say about a woman’s experience in sexism is not important at all, or helpful, or illuminating, and if you are protesting too much when they speak up you are definitely not listening enough and you are learning nothing. Nothing about yourself, nothing about how women experience your community, nothing about solving the problem of bringing more of them on board. You might even be driving away the ones who have stuck around so far. And however personally fulfilling it might be to see your words alive on screen somewhere, it’s not going to help you meet your goal of growing your community.

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8 Responses

There is a great deal of unintended irony in this posting IMO. It’s basically woman-splaining. Nothing you point out is indicative to a problem with men only and to basically be saying that any long comments from men to women about sexism are instantly wrong and likely sexist seems on its face designed to shut down conversation and dialog. I tend to be an overly verbose person (though I like to think I’ve improved in that arena :p) and sometimes I know I’ve had my head planted firmly up my ass and sometimes I know I was right. Other times I’ve made short comments that went either way as well.

The thing about the skeptical community that plays into this specifically IMO is that we tend to be more-detail oriented and like to cover all our bases in one shot. Someone says “I saw an alien ship fly through the sky” it will likely take more than the one sentence the claim was made in to explain precisely why we should not take that claim at face value. Now, I’m not going to say that this sexism in skepticism debate hasn’t brought out some really ignorant and crass men with whom I don’t want to associate myself, but there are also plenty of well-spoken men with whom I do. Sometimes I agree with a woman’s particular stated view and sometimes I don’t. Same thing for the men.

Bottom line; I really don’t understand how you can honestly suggest that all (or even most all if you’d prefer) responses from men towards women on matters of sexism will be wrong if they meet certain criteria which have nothing to do with content and everything to do with form.

First of all, I am not woman-splaining to you. I had an opinion, which I published in my own space, in the absence of any other dialogue. It is exactly on topic and it is not shouting down anyone, or overwhelming any previously stated points of view here.

Nothing you point out is indicative to a problem with men only

Which is why I say right away that it is not always men who do this.

to basically be saying that any long comments from men to women about sexism are instantly wrong and likely sexist seems on its face designed to shut down conversation and dialog.

I did not say they were instantly wrong; I said they were probably a derail of the actual conversation going on in the comments, and that the impulse behind the need to flood a comments conversation with your lengthy personal input or point of view is probably sexist. And they do shut down conversation and dialogue that is already occurring.

Someone says “I saw an alien ship fly through the sky” it will likely take more than the one sentence the claim was made in to explain precisely why we should not take that claim at face value.

“I saw an alien ship” is an extraordinary claim; “I experienced sexism” is not. It is perfectly ordinary and mundane. There is no need AT ALL to explain precisely to a woman why you are not taking her claim of experiencing sexism at face value. If you find yourself doing that, see above.

Sometimes I agree with a woman’s particular stated view and sometimes I don’t. Same thing for the men.

OK. Nobody has to agree with everything. But if you find yourself in the kinds of oppositional commenting or disagreement that I describe above, you are not contributing to a conversation; you are creating barriers to it.

I really don’t understand how you can honestly suggest that all (or even most all if you’d prefer) responses from men towards women on matters of sexism will be wrong if they meet certain criteria which have nothing to do with content and everything to do with form.

I gave some criteria that would likely indicate when a man’s input on sexism would contribute to a conversation, and when it detracts from it, and described the exact kind of content that serves to detract. I did not discuss form AT ALL. Naming a category is not form. Length is not form. Either you are deliberately misunderstanding what I say, or you came into this post without an open mind or a willingness to learn something outside of your comfort zone; whichever it is, I recommend you reread it and think about what it says for a while before you engage with it further.

Nothing you point out is indicative to a problem with men only and to basically be saying that any long comments from men to women about sexism are instantly wrong and likely sexist seems on its face designed to shut down conversation and dialog.

I read through Karen’s post again and I see that she did qualify her statements so that this misunderstanding could be avoided.

For example, she starts off by saying:

I am noticing more and more often in reading the blogs (and probably in following the videos, although I don’t generally participate in the videosphere but have heard plenty about it) that whenever a woman makes a pretty straightforward point about sexism, there are predictably people–usually men, but not always–who show up to shut her down by flooding her with words.

She noticed a pattern and was careful to say that it was something she noticed more and more, not that it was across the board or that it was “men only.” She was careful to point out that it is “usually” men but not always. So I was surprised to read your comment implying that Karen is of the opinion that long replies to women’s posts are “instantly wrong.” I never got the impression that she was trying to make things seem as black and white as your post implies. And just to be clear: I am not jumping to the conclusion that you are trying to twist Karen’s words out of malicious intent (which would be silly anyway because they are right there for everyone to read).

You end by saying that Karen’s criteria (which I see as informed opinions and pieces of advice based on living life as a woman who uses the internet) have “nothing to do with content and everything to do with form.” And yet – under the “word count” section for example – she says things like “If all you have to talk about is yourself, stay out of it”, which is clearly in reference to the content of a post and one of the reasons WHY it ends up being a longer post than necessary and can result in derailment. And it sounds like good advice to me. She is letting men know how certain behaviors might be perceived by others, particularly women. Of course some men need these pointers more than others. I happen to find her insights very helpful. Sometimes I can apply them to my own life, sometimes I cannot. Either way, sexism is alive and well and I think Karen’s rational and articulate comments on the topic can facilitate some much-needed self-reflection and growth.

Woman: I am writing a 1500-word blog post about sexism I have experienced.
Man: I am writing a 1500-word blog post in response to your blog post about sexism you have experienced.

I was thinking more like his reply would b 1500 words on how insignificant your issue is. (I have a special love for the posters who take time to chastise us about “wasting time” on the internet. Not sure why they pause to do so…)

To rebuttal, briefly–I think part of the reason we never get anywhere in exploring arguments is that we demand they all be summed up in sixty second sound bytes. The internet version of this is short replies. One cannot read a 1500-3000 word post and offer a valid, well thought out, and well researched counter argument in 100 words or less. But it does have the side effect of silencing very intelligent people (along with the assholes), and I’m not sure how that helps anyone.